I Bet They Can Almost Taste It

Pictured: Detailed breakdowns (click for larger version).

Golly, what a shocker! Imagine, a new poll by the Strategic Counsel showing that the Conservative party is poised on the brink of a majority government, released the very same day that it now looks absolutely certain we’ll be going to the ballot box next month. I guess that proves conclusively that Harper wasn’t just lying his ass off about wanting an election because parliament was “dysfunctional” and overly partisan… um, right?

According to the poll, if a vote were held today, 37 per cent of Canadians would support the Tories, compared with just 29 percent for the Liberals, 17 percent for the NDP and 9 percent for the Green Party.

It seems all that furious vote-buying over the summer has really paid off for Harper and the Tories. Oh sure, there are a few cranks out there who might complain about it having frittered away what was left of the budget surplus and it increasing spending by an alarming rate, but most reasonable people would agree that a few billion dollars of taxpayers’ money is a small price to pay if it helps to fulfill Harper’s personal wet dream of vindictively “crushing” the Liberals and becoming the autocratic ruler of Canada for the next decade or so.

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34 Replies to “I Bet They Can Almost Taste It”

As Steve points out.. this poll is a bit whacky with its internals. All other polls released this week show a dead heat and 2 of em with the Libs in the lead within the MOE. All polls show double digit leads in Ontario for the libs.. yet this one shows the Cons gained 10 points and have 41% suppot?

Sorry.. I ain’t buying it. This poll screams outlier. This company’s polling results also aren’t anything to write home about.

We’ll be seeing lots more of them in the coming weeks, so I’m not sweating it unless some general trend starts to emerge showing the Conservatives heading firmly into majority territory. Then, one would have to hope that the usual backlash would kick in as is usually the case when people start mulling over the implications of that.

As for it being an “outlier” this one does seem quite a bit out of whack when compared to the Nanos one, although it seems to be perfectly in line with the most recent Angus Reid poll. That one showed Con: 36%, Lib: 28%, NDP: 18%, Green: 8%, BQ: 9%. Not sure how all the internals compare though. The Ontario figures on this one seem a little suspect.

My initial thoughts were that this must be an outlier, especially with the much higher than usual numbers for the Conservatives in Ontario. However, after some thought, I am starting to worry a little. Many Ontarians are worried about a deep recesssion, Harper’s lie that the carbon tax is a tax on everything may have started to shift some opinion away from the Liberals – lets not forget that we are stupid enough here to have elected Harris to two majorities.

These numbers, of course don’t really spell much of a change in the parliamentary makeup (although I wonder how it is that compared to the last election the Cons could be up 1, the Libs down 1, the NDP even, but yet the Greens are up 4.5 – Where are the Greens getting that support from?)

People temporarily “parking” there votes, most likely. It’s a pretty standard thing it seems. The Greens always seem to poll much better than turns out to be the actual case at the time of the election.

Yes I woke up to this poll too and I was quite surprised at how different it was from the Nanos poll. There is no way the support flip-flopped that quickly. Furthermore, I can’t believe that Canadians would be duped by this guy! A full 4 year majority would be a night mare!

Red, re “The Greens always seem to poll much better than turns out to be the actual case at the time of the election,” I refer to pre-poll, granddaddy wisdom: The only poll that counts is where the X goes when you step behind the curtain…or into a cardboard box, as the times would have it.

And remember – in the last election Nanos, from what I understand, was well on the mark with just a tiny discrepancy somewhere there. And it’s far too early, as we all know, to take any polls to heart as the election & campaigning haven’t even begun yet.

Penlan — You know how polls say in their disclaimers that they’re accurate 19 times out of 20 or whatever? Well the “outlier” is the 1 in 20 that, for whatever reason, is statistically anomalous from other polls.

Nothing like having the country’s dueling, banjo-playing rednecks electing the Trailer Park Boys with a majority to run roughshod over Canada, eh? The rest of Canada feels sodomized.

If there ever was a comment that illustrates how the left/progressives kissed off their former constituencies and now speak for the urban elites, that’s it. I always thought FDR’s coalition-building was the epitome of electoral brilliance, but Harper’s alliance of Big Oil and the Trailer Park Boys tops them all.

Nah, there is a small group (four actually) of us who stand for a synthesis of regressive taxtation, anti-racism, open immigration, young earth creationism, killing more wildlife and promoting the global leadership of France. We meet once a month for dinner. I kep telling them we’re going to have to work on the delivery if we ever hope to take power, but they just throw buns at me.

Peter, I guess when you put yourself outside of mainstream society you can only blame others by calling them elite. Eighty percent of Canada’s population lives in cities, that doesn’t make us elite, it makes us the majority.

It’s time to expand your vocabulary, pull out a thesaurus, and expand your analytical thinking. But I suppose going beyond the “Conservative Speak For Dummies” book’s glossary would make one being prone to elitism as well.

It has to be said that the term “urban elites” is kind of a misnomer. I’d venture to bet that the majority of people who live in urban centres are average or below on the income scale. Most of the money is in the suburbs (where the Conservatives traditionally fare quite well, unsurprisingly) of our major cities. That is of course presuming that “elite” has anything to do with income, rather than being some imagined cultural trait based on stereotypes imported from the U.S. courtesy of right-wing spinmeisters.

I’ll grant you we’d all be better off if the word elite was banned for a year and also that its unhelpful to talk about economic elites. But I suggest there is an open intellectual snobbery at play on the left today that allows many to effectively disenfranchise their opponents through accusations of stupidity or unwordliness–the Starbucks vs Tim Horton’s syndrome. Think of Dawkins’s Brights, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, disdain for suburban living, militant, mocking atheism, environmental activism from a distance, the ceaseless sneering at anyone defending something called family values and a lot (not all) of rote anti-Americanism. Indeed, I’m kind of surprised that after the electoral successes of Reagan, Bush, Harper and lots of Europeans, there isn’t more self-criticism and awareness that maybe, just maybe, urban progressives/academics/media are a little too certain they know exactly how everyone else should think and live and that they might benefit from less time preaching and more listening.

Arrogance on the right can be very offensive too, of course, but it doesn’t seem to me to be marked so much by paternalistic accusations of false consciousness. Much more a straightforward “We’re right, you’re wrong, wanna step outside?” dust-up. You have to admit that big city urbanites from faculty clubs, blue chip law firms and leafy enclaves like Forest Hill and Rockliffe can be very prone to telling the rest of the country how to live, raise their families, protect their environments, husband their resources and educate their children, but your average joe from Camrose or Pembroke doesn’t preach too much about race relations or mass transit in Toronto.

If there ever was a comment that illustrates how the left/progressives kissed off their former constituencies and now speak for the urban elites, that’s it.

I see the language/thought police is on the job.

What astonishes me is how much leftists/progressives appear to be easily chastened by the accusation of elitism by faux-populists like Peter, who subsequently fall over themselves defending the charge. It’s a button he pushes all the time; no doubt aided by lefties like Dawg who are too often in a constant state of recantation and apology.

It’s a false, insulting accusation right from the start, imported from a truly class-stratified society like the US, and should be rejected out of hand.

Whatever your feelings of inadequacy are with relation to class, Peter, is something you alone have to deal with.

I darn, I posted too soon. Peter provided yet another helping of complex nonsense that is, we have to admit, solely a reflection of how a lot of winguts up-and-down the food chain seem to *feel* reality, rather than actually know it.

Camrose is representative of small-town Canada? With its private neigbourhoods of multi-million dollar homes on the Benchlands? Really? And genteel Pembroke, the good burgers of which are known for the appallingly cheap snobbery they display with regard to the farming communities that surround it?

You really are watching too much American television, Peter. You need to get out more.

Peter — …your average joe from Camrose or Pembroke doesn’t preach too much about race relations or mass transit in Toronto.

Those who live in Delisle and presume to speak for them sure do.

…there isn’t more self-criticism and awareness that maybe, just maybe, urban progressives/academics/media are a little too certain they know exactly how everyone else should think and live and that they might benefit from less time preaching and more listening.

This sounds more like the product of an over-active imagination to me than anything rooted in reality.

This sounds more like the product of an over-active imagination to me than anything rooted in reality.

It sounds a lot like complete confusion. Academics study reality and come to conclusions…some flattering, some less son (and some completely loopy, but that’s another issue). People like Peter are so class-conscious that anything other than full-throated support for the suburban lifestyle and misty-eyed homilies about hail and hardy rural folk toiling the land (what’s the percentage of Canadians actually engaged in agriculture these days…3%?) is viewed as nothing but cheap snobbery.

Meanwhile, the constant barrage of mean-spirited, moral condemnation lobbed at urbanites (most of it centred on Toronto, a city far too boring to merit the attention it commands from other Canadians, who, obviously, don’t have better things to bitch about) goes largely unnoticed.

It’s such a complicated nonsense it barely merits any attention at all. I mean “Starbucks vs. Tim Horton’s;” ..*snort*…that was plucked straight out of American discourse, with Tim Horton’s substituting for Dunkin’ Donuts.

Nothing like having the country’s dueling, banjo-playing rednecks electing the Trailer Park Boys with a majority to run roughshod over Canada, eh?

The rest of Canada feels sodomized.

When I read this I fired up my copy of Deliverance and oiled up my zippers. After, why should the banjo-playing rednecks get all the fun? Highly educated and articulate Conservative folk should be allowed to shout, ‘Squeal like a Lib, boy!’ too.

Early days my ass. Bend down ’cause we’re soon gonna be in yours. Just one question, Gibbs: do you want your hair pulled when you take it in the rear?